ABSTRACT
Russia’s determination to ‘liberate’ Chechnya irrespective of the financial, human or physical cost illustrates how fruitless it is to try and counter ‘terrorism’ by means of war. As has been noted, a people bent upon freedom being bombed by airplanes from above, lacking an air force of their own, will tend to bomb back from below. It is disingenuous of the Russian authorities to maintain that they are fighting anything other than a guerrilla war in Chechnya. If the Russians are fighting ‘international terrorism’ in Chechnya, then the international community should be involved. To be sure Basaev and his ilk would have turned their guns on any Western force that might have been sent into Chechnya. The difference is that Western troops would have been considerably less likely than their Russian counterparts to alienate the indigenous population and might well, eventually, have isolated the extremists to such an extent as to make dialogue with more moderate forces possible.2
